“On or about the 14th of February, 2013, the hair on Little Printers’ faces began to grow.

“Stick with us. This is about the future of the Internet of Things.

“Little Printer is a creation of BERG, a design consultancy based in London. Little Printer is a connected appliance. It sits in your home and prints off a personalized tiny daily newspaper on receipt paper. To power the thing, BERG created BERG Cloud. “BERG Cloud is our operating system for connected products, with Little Printer as the first product,” says BERG CEO Matt Webb.

“Here’s how Little Printer works. You connect it up to your network. Using a smartphone app, you sign up for a variety of tiny publications, ranging from a daily puzzle to a short story, from the latest headlines to tips on taking better smartphone pictures. Every day, BERG Cloud assembles your personalized newspaper and sends it to the Little Printer, which prints it off at the touch of a button.

“Frivolous Applications of Big Ideas

“If you are having trouble understanding why you’d want one of these in your home, you are not alone. Venture Beat thinks the Little Printer must fail for the crime of being a wasteful novelty. The Verge reviewed it, saying it was more like a piece of art than a useful gadget.

” “We’ve had a long interest in what happens when the Internet is no longer trapped behind glass.”

“Little Printer is a niche product. There are only about 1,000 in the world right now, and BERG is gearing up for a second production run which will start at 5,000 units. These are not mass-market numbers, and Webb is fine with that. Five thousand is a victory. “Little Printer is so unusual compared to anything else out there, it’s wonderful to have enough interest and engagement to start scaling up like this.”

“The context in which you need to think about Little Printer is a society on the brink of almost completely wiring itself up with sensors and networks. This is the Internet of Things that a lot of people are talking about and trying to work out how to properly build. It’s a world of thermostats that talk to your friends and cars that know where they’ve been driven. It’s a world of citizen scientists, talking toys, smart fridges and drones, drones, drones.

“The key to understanding Little Printer is in not assuming it’s the endpoint of BERG’s plans for connected devices but the beginning. Little Printer is a foothold….”